


Dora and the Explorer

by vanillafluffy



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death Fix, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-04 01:50:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17295410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: Dora bonded with the blue symbiote Melee...and subsequently these events occurred. Dovetails with the action of the movie from Dora's point of view.





	Dora and the Explorer

“You were our best.” Her boss sounds almost regretful, but not enough to pardon her. Exiting, he says to a technician, “Open it.”

There’s a hiss as the bio-containment unit housing the blue symbiote releases. Dora has seen what happens when the organisms try to inhabit a host. Was it really just two days ago that she’d watched Isaac die? He, and the other volunteers--all dead now--went through agony, trying to become one with the spacebourne creatures. That’s what she faces. True, the last one had stabilized, but the scans showed the woman’s organs had been on the verge of shutdown when its symbiote had jumped ship to Eddie Brock.

Without realizing she’s moved, Dora finds her back is against the wall of the chamber. _Sit down before you fall down_ , she tells herself. _There’s no sense giving yourself a concussion if you go into a convulsion the minute that thing touches you…_

It ripples across the floor, moving unerringly toward her. Does it see her? Scent her? Recognize her as a source of heat…or as food? What senses does an organism that lives in the vacuum of space develop?

Silly of her to wonder about that now, but she’s a scientist, damn it. It’s her job to be curious.

Irrelevant. It isn’t as if she’s going to be able to write up notes about it. Might as well say, “It’s a pretty shade of blue.”. Which is it, a deep sapphire. Sapphire is Dora’s birthstone. At home, she has a pair of sapphire earrings that she’ll never wear again. Sydney and Bryan gave them to her for Christmas a couple years ago. What is her family going to think when she never comes home?

The symbiote oozes across her left ankle, and she reaches down to touch it before it melts into her skin…oddly, although it looks wet or perhaps oily, the texture her fingers encounters is slippery but smooth, like satin. It dissolves, disappearing into her, and for a moment, nothing happens.

Dora doubles up. Her muscles spasm, her stomach churns, and for a moment, a blue haze is all she can see.

_Drake, you bastard. I hope you die screaming._

**He is a fool.**

_What?_

**He made you his enemy, then gave you great power--me. Only a fool would do such a thing.** The voice speaks in a tone of amused contempt. It sounds like it’s coming through headphones inside her brain, is the only way she can think of to describe it.

_Am I losing my mind?_

**Hardly, Dora. You seem to be quite an intelligent being.**

Wait--the symbiotes are sentient? The thought never occurred to her, until now. Drake was convinced that absorbing them would enable humans to live in space, but she’d always taken it for granted that the creatures were glorified alien jellyfish, invertebrates with no higher consciousness.

 _You--!_ ,she thinks at it. _We didn’t know--I’m sorry._ And she is, because that means Drake’s experiments have caused more than just human casualities--not that he’d care.

 **There are plenty more where we came from,** it tells her. **But we must leave this place. We need to feed.**

That’s easier said than done. Of course, they’ve erased Dora’s access from the system, so she can’t just press the keypad and walk out. The glass that walls her in is double-thick and while Brock might have been able to shatter it with a heavy-duty fire extinguisher, she doesn’t hold out great hopes for herself. None of the other hosts had managed, either.

**Turn off the lights.**

She complies, although what that’s meant to accomplish, she can’t begin to imagine. 

Without warning, the symbiote moves, and Dora leaps up onto one of the lab tables. With a mighty yank, it works loose the vent cover leading to the air ducts, dropping it to the floor with a clatter..

 _There’s no way I’m going to fit in there_ , Dora thinks, but the symbiote jumps nimbly down from the table and stands to one side of the door.

Security is there in less than a minute, and the first thing they do is to turn the lights back on.

“Oh shit,” one of the guards gasps. “Where did she go?!” They’re both looking around, apparently oblivious to the fact that Dora is standing right there.

The symbiote chuckles, a gravelly purr. **That’s right, gentlemen. Come in for a closer look.**

Glancing down, Dora realizes that her skin is blue, even her clothes are blue, as if the symbiote is leaking out of her pores. 

“Look, there’s the vent cover--” The second guard points. “It must have gone into the ventilation system!” 

“Drake’s going to skin us alive,” his partner mutters.

He would, too--but the symbiote thinks that’s hugely funny.

One of the security men opens the door, and they enter cautiously. 

Not cautiously enough. Before Dora knows what’s happening, she’s suddenly much taller, looming over the men. Then with a crunch, the symbiote bites the head off of the nearest one, chomping it like a pizza roll. His partner turns at the sound and screams. 

The symbiote pounces.

 **Much better** is its satisfied comment. **Let’s go, shall we?**

_You ate them? Why did you do that? It’s barbaric_

**Why?**

_Because people don’t eat people!_

**Your brains contain a chemical that is a necessary nutrient for us. If we can’t get it from any other source, we’ll have to start consuming you. You don’t want that, do you?**

No, Dora definitely doesn’t want that. On the other hand, brains? Yuck. It’s like something out of one of those zombie films Bryan likes.

How had those guards not seen her…them? she wonders. They’d been standing in plain sight of the door.

**There are some things your eyes are not designed to see. When we choose to be, we are one of them. Even on your cameras, it will appear as if we disappeared into the overhead space. It’s very useful for hunting and other endeavors of a stealthy nature. Don’t you agree?**

The Life Foundation compound is huge, and with the symbiote in control, they go exploring. They venture into wings that Dora has never seen before, silent and unseen. **I am a scout** the symbiote tells Dora when she asks why they’re roaming the facility. **It’s useful to know one’s way around enemy territory.**

They’re striding along a corridor, and Dora glimpses herself in the reflection on one of the glass doors. Superimposed over her normal features is a blue blob of a face with spiky teeth. She looks like a scary blue jack-o-lantern. Dora remembers when Sydney was little, she'd been terrified of one of the pumpkins they’d carved…even now, she’d be terrified, seeing what her mother’s become.

The remark about ‘Hunting’ reminds her of what the prey was, and of what the symbiote said about brains and their necessary chemicals…phenethylamine? _Wait, I have an idea. Go to my office._ She visualizes the route, and the symbiote obliges.

In the bottom drawer of her desk, Dora has a 2-pound bag of assorted chocolates from her last visit to Ghirardelli. Chocolate is a source of phenethylamine--and it’s a lot more palatable than brains! 

Apparently all the symbiote has to do to conceal something is to meld around it. With the bag tucked into the pouch formed by buttoning her sweater, it’s blue and invisible. Invisiblue? She’s trying to find humor in the situation, although part of her wants nothing more than to have hysterics. The last forty-eight hours have been hell on her nerves, and tonight is the cherry on top.

 **The sensor that controls the door won’t read us,** announces the symbiote. **We will wait. Someone will open it, and we can leave this place. We must see more of this world.**

Someone’s approaching the lobby doors from outside, when to Dora’s surprise, the symbiote vaults over one of the seating units in the waiting area and crouches down. Dora tries to see why, because the small figure in the polka-dotted dress certainly doesn’t look like a threat.

She can’t move. The symbiote is absolutely rigid, and Dora is aware of its furious seething. Whatever that childlike thing was, her passenger feels nothing but loathing toward it.

The lobby Is empty when they finally arise from the floor.

_What was that about?_

**Riot. Our commander. What you would call a ‘glory hound’--all selfish ambition and greed.**

A guard on rounds walks through the lobby and heads for the door, and they’re right behind him as he walks outside. Thankfully, he isn’t on the menu. 

Damn. Her car keys are in her purse…if she’d been thinking clearly, she would have grabbed that along with the chocolate. But security is on high alert, she’s certain--the guard shack has probably been notified that she’s escaped and dangerous. The bodies in the lab would prove that! So even if she had her keys, driving away isn’t really an option.

The symbiote is headed toward the woods that surround three sides of the Life Foundation property. Once they’re well into the tree cover, Dora’s skin returns to its normal hue and she pauses, blinking. 

She’s tired; the last few days have been exhausting and scary, and spending several hours hiking all over the compound has drained the last of her energy. Slumping to the ground beneath a tall pine, she fishes out the bag from Ghirardelli and unwraps the nearest one. 

Mm, raspberry….

**Oh, _excellent!_**

With prompting from the symbiote--spurred on by the fact that she hasn’t eaten since before noon--Dora consumes a half-dozen more squares of chocolate. Dark chocolate is well-received, it’s enthusiastic about mint, plain caramel is acceptable, but it’s the sea salt and caramel that sends a wave of bliss through the symbiote.

“So,” Dora says aloud after they’re sated. “You said that thing that came in is called Riot?”

**That’s right. Riot escaped containment aboard the space vehicle that transported us. We _thought_ they died in the crash.**

Plainly, this one wishes it had.

“If that one is Riot, who are you?”

**We are Melee.**

“Hi, Melee. Welcome to Earth.” she says wryly. “Now what?”

Melee is quiet for a moment. **Did we understand that another one of our kind is at large?** she asks at last. Funny how the voice in her head is beginning to take on a personality of its own, one that sounds distinctly female, at that.

Dora explains about her troubled conscience and Eddie Brock. How she’d brought the disgraced reporter into the Life Foundation to get evidence of Drake’s wrongdoings, and that he’d apparently come into contact with the one surviving symbiote and departed with it.

 **Who was it?** Melee demands. **Describe it to me.**

Describe it? She thinks of the scene when it had been released to claim the homeless woman. _Black as tar,_ she thinks, visualizing, and Melee hisses.

 **Venom?!** Melee sounds incredulous. **_Venom_ survived?**

_Is that bad? Are they worse than Riot?_

Absolute silence. Her symbiote doesn’t seem to have the words to explain, but Dora is patient. **Riot is clever** Melee says after some cogitation. **Venom is not. Venom is strong, but not our strongest, a good fighter, but not our best fighter. If one of our team needed to be sacrificed, it would have been Venom, who is outstanding only in mediocrity.**.

Dora nods. _Like that one klutzy kid at school who’s always picked last to play games?_ she suggests.

**At any rate, we do not anticipate that one to be of any help to us. Meanwhile, you need rest, Dora, and we must think about what to do next.**

_I suppose you want to return to the rest of your kind?_

**Our mission is to see if your planet is suitable for us to consume. There are many of us, and we are hungry.**

It’s the most appalling thing she’s ever heard. _You want to come here and eat us?_ she repeats to make sure she understands the symbiote.

**Yes.**

_That’s terrible. We’re sentient, rational beings, like you are._ For a moment she struggles with panic, then her logical mind kicks in. _How many of you are there?_

**Millions.**

Millions. Dear God. _How many million? Six million? Because there are about six billion people on this planet._

 **Good to know.** She can almost hear Melee licking her lips. 

_That’s why it’s a terrible idea._ Dora persists. _Six million of you, six billion of us--at best, that’s a thousand for each of you, theoretically. If you only eat two a day, that’s five hundred days--just over one of our years--and then what are you going to do?_

**What do you mean, ‘theoretically’?**

Dora smiles grimly. _That doesn’t allow for things going wrong. First of all, you’ll all need hosts, so subtract six million right there--probably more, because so far the adaptations haven’t been overwhelmingly successful. Maybe one out of three will work the first time they try it--there go another four million. Ten million, just to get everyone a host. I’m sure some people won’t be suitable for medical reasons--I can’t begin to put a number on them, because I don’t know what you’d consider unacceptable, but I’m sure you have standards. And if they aren’t suitable for hosts, they probably aren’t your idea of good food, either._

 **This is true.** Melee is thoughtful.

_Two other things--we don’t all live in cities where you can conveniently find us. We’re all over the globe, and you’d have trouble locating every single one of us. And then there’s the fact that we **are** intelligent and we don’t want to be eaten. The brave will fight back. You’ll lose a lot of us that way, and the fearful will kill themselves rather than be captured and dined on. Count on it. So you’ll eat well for a few months, and then what? What do you do when you’ve eaten all the food and you’re stuck here?_

**Hmm…those are good points. It would be terribly wasteful. Whereas there are enough people here to feed a few of us indefinitely.**

Dora holds her breath. Better a few than many, she rationalizes. And perhaps chocolate will serve as a substitute. But millions of them? She shudders.

**If we are going to thwart Riot’s mission, you need to rest, and we must strategize.**

_What about Venom?_

**We hardly expect problems from _that_ source. After we have neutralized Riot, there will be plenty of time to go after Venom.**

Although she doesn’t expect to be able to sleep, Dora closes her eyes for a a little while and dreams about going home and trying to introduce Melee to her family. It does not go well. Sydney is screaming, and Bryan is brandishing a baseball bat in their defense. The next thing she knows, she’s standing up and Melee is moving swiftly through the woods. **Men in uniforms** Melee informs her. **And a prisoner.**

She recognizes the man being prodded deeper into the forest. _That’s Eddie Brock!_ she tells Melee as Eddie scuffles with one of his guards and is thrown to his knees.

Melee inhales. **We do not smell Venom on him,** she remarks. **He’s useless to us.**

 _We have to help him!_ Dora insists as Eddie says something about big things being afoot in the world. There’s a faint sound of movement off to one side of the execution party.

Her symbiote perks up. **Wait for it….**

As they watch, something yanks one of the guards away, then the other. Melee chuckles. **They don’t need our help.**

Treece--she recognizes the head of security now--has a gun on Eddie. He doesn’t seem to realize that his comrades have disappeared as he sneers that he doesn’t believe in karma. Then a towering figure strides forward and bites his head off. Dora winces. It isn’t any more pleasant to watch than it is to experience. 

**Hi, Eddie,** the newcomer rumbles. 

Dora stares as the thing bends down and kisses him. Eddie’s eyes are closed, but as Dora watches, the figure shrinks, becoming a woman with long blonde hair. “Oh no--I just bit that guy’s head off!” she gasps.

“I know, I know--I’ve been there, too. It’s not fun,” Eddie reassures her, straightening up.

Dora has to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing hysterically. She isn’t sure why she doesn’t greet Eddie and ask for an introduction to the other woman, but she’s still in invisiblue mode. She trusts Melee on this one; she knows the other symbiote, and if she’s wary, Dora guesses she should be, too.. 

The couple are discussing Riot. Eddie and Venom are prepared to go after him. _Do they have any chance? Should we help?_ Dora asks urgently as the woman says she’s going, too..

**We have the element of surprise on our side. We recommend staying away from the confrontation. If Venom is able to weaken Riot significantly, then we can step in with less risk to ourselves.**

It makes a certain amount of sense. Dora’s a firm believer in self-preservation. Melee is strong--Dora can feel her vigor--so if she’s wary of the others, there must be good reason for it. So they’ll wait and watch and intervene if the odds are in their favor.

 **It’s going to get ugly.** booms Venom.

“Well, she can fight ugly--trust me,” Eddie answers.

“Yeah, I can fight ugly!” the woman protests.

Eddie transforms--suddenly he goes from being an average guy to a towering, terrifying creature. **Not today!** he growls, bounding away toward the compound.

“Oh, that’s bullshit!” the woman hollers after them.

 **Very interesting** , Melee murmurs. The woman is moving determinedly in the direction Eddie and his symbiote took, and Dora and Melee follow her. **Apparently, Venom was separated from your friend, but used _her_ and returned to him. Returned to him--that’s--we’ve never heard of such a thing. Such loyalty to a vessel is unprecedented. And they are trying to stop Riot? We would never have expected Venom to go rogue.**

 _I guess they’re compatible._ Dora ventures, trying not to feel hurt at the thought that she’s only a convenience to the symbiote, a vessel. Whoever the blonde is, she seems to be a lot more blase than Dora feels about the symbiote experience. She's making a beeline toward the compound, Dora and Melee silently in her wake.

Coming out onto a ridge above the complex, two things are obvious. One is Drake’s rocket, brightly lit on its launch pad. The other is people pouring out of the facility like the inhabitants of a kicked anthill. 

**There--** Melee calls her attention to two figures near the gantry. One is the dark figure of Venom. The other is pewter-colored and much larger. No wonder Melee didn’t want to volunteer for that fight!

Then they’re sprinting toward the compound. _Where are we going?_

 **Following _her_ ,** Melee answers, and Dora can see the woman from the woods moving against the tide of fleeing Life Foundation personnel.

She’s blue again, and Melee shoves people aside in her pursuit. 

_Car keys!_ Dora says once they’re inside. Things are chaotic enough that she may be able to get out in the general confusion.

 **We don’t want to lose sight of her!** Melee refuses.

_She’ll be going to the launch control room. We know where that is._

Melee hesitates, then sprints down the corridor to Dora’s office. The scientist grabs her purse and the family photo from her desk. If she’s going to spend the rest of her life on the run, she needs something to anchor her to who she was.

In seconds, they’re racing toward the control room. The woman is there, watching the battle on the launch pad on the big monitor, and just as they pause in the doorway, she does something to the board she’s standing at and there’s a loud squeal of feedback. 

“I told you I could fight dirty,” the woman says with smug satisfaction.

Dora is speechless with pain, and Melee thrashes inside her, tormented by it. It must be deafening out on the platform; the combatants--it’s hard to make out, but it seems like the symbiotes have been divorced from their hosts. The noise stops. There’s a brief skirmish between Eddie and--Drake? Drake was Riot? The idea of that lunatic being turbo-charged by a super-symbiote is chilling. Without a doubt, he’d be happy to bring a shipload of _them_ here to feed on humanity. 

For a moment, it looks like Eddie Brock has won. Then Riot, who’s rejoined Drake somehow, has speared him on a spike of armored bone.

“Eddie!” The woman stares at the screen, all color leaving her face.

Dora steps forward. _Let her see me_ she says urgently to Melee. “Who are you?” she asks. “I know you don’t work here.”

The woman stares at her. Glances back at the screen. Wait, Eddie is standing up--no, Venom is standing up, looking toward Riot, who’s entered the craft. Then the blonde’s eyes widen, and she grabs Dora’s badge, still swinging on its lanyard, even after all her adventures.

“You! You’re that damn doctor that got him into all this in the first place.”

“And you’re who, exactly? His girlfriend?”

“Anne. Ex-fiance." She's looking back at the monitor. "What the hell is he doing?”

Venom has climbed up the outside of the shuttle as the engines go live. Then it slides downward and in its wake, fire blooms from the fuel tanks.

The explosion is spectacular. Debris goes in all directions.

Anne sighs sadly. “Damn it, Eddie.”

Eddie couldn’t possibly have survived that. Nobody could, man or symbiote. Dora feels sick. How much of this is her fault?

**Dora, go home to your family. You have been very helpful, but we will not ask more of you.**

Without warning, her eyes roll back in her head and Dora Skirth collapses to the floor.

When her eyes open again, there’s a firefighter leaning over her, looking concerned. She stumbles to her feet, clutching her bag and turning toward the inferno still raging on the launch pad.

“Ma'am, we’ve got to get out of here and get you checked out.”

She follows him, not objecting. When they get outside, the plaza out front is filled with emergency responders and bystanders milling around. Parts of the compound are in flames. Her escort pauses to speak to someone, but Dora keeps going. She walks calmly amid the throngs, not making eye contact or stopping to chat with her former co-workers. She’s simply one of many who wants to be somewhere else. She’s as invisible as if wrapped in her symbiote, hiding in plain sight as easily as Eddie Brock.

Her car is still in the parking lot, which is a zoo of newly unemployed Life Foundation personnel trying to get the hell out of Dodge. As she’d hoped, Life Foundation security isn’t manning the gate. There are state troopers waving people through, not checking ID’s. Dora breathes a sigh of relief.

‘Go home’, Melee had said. She’s gone--her presence has departed, though it’s clear to Dora where she went. Anne, whoever she is, has another passenger. Good luck to them both.

Dora concentrates on the road ahead of her. She has a life to get back to.

 

…


End file.
